The World Boxing Federation has been a mainstay in world boxing since 1988, and has had various legendary champions, with the likes of Evander Holyfield, Roy Jones Jr and even fighters that transcended combat sports such as Jane Couch MBE and Holly Holm who went on to greatness in the UFC have at one time held a version of the WBF World title.
The WBF is headed up by South African Howard Goldberg, who has been at the epicentre of African and World boxing for numerous decades now. With world sanctioning bodies being more in the limelight now than ever before, Goldberg gave his assessment on the world boxing scene as a whole from a governing body standpoint.
The WBF President said, “One thing that is a problem now in the world of boxing is that there are too many world titles per governing body. You have governing bodies that have the interim world title, the super world title, the diamond world title, it seems to go on and on. That isn’t good for boxing and we at the World Boxing Federation have always maintained that we will only ever have one world champion per weight class.
“It has been apparent that the quality of judging worldwide may be on the decline simply down to the number of high profile errors and controversial decisions that are witnessed on a weekly basis. We at the WBF monitor all our judges very closely and if they are not performing to the standard we expect from them we, unfortunately, part ways as we feel that our integrity is our greatest asset and we can’t have that brought into disrepute.”
Goldberg continued, discussing the plans for the WBF going forward, “The WBF has always had good champions and has also had titles contested in every continent globally. This is a theme we are looking to continue with whilst also raising the quality of our title contests and expanding into new parts of the globe that may have not witnessed WBF title fights for one reason or another.”
Boxing is a sport that takes give people who come from nothing a chance to dream and better their lives. Real boxing people have always given back as they likely would have faced adversity at one point in their lives whether that be in their upbringing or in boxing. Howard Goldberg is no different, as the WBF President takes time out to mentor local underprivileged children at chess.
Goldberg gave an insight into how he attempts to help his local community, “As well as growing up loving boxing, I was also a nationally ranked chess player. There are a lot of similarities between chess and boxing, they both require dedication, focus, discipline amongst other integral factors. Every week I spend a couple of evenings with local underprivileged children in the Cape Town communities teaching them chess and the life skills that surround chess. This is one of my ways in attempting to create a better generation going forward in my local community.”
